TRENTON — Pitching again was the name of the game in the now-completed three-game Trenton Thunder-New Hampshire series.

Good thing, since the hitting continued not to be.

Riding six innings of two-hit ball by starting pitcher Nik Turley, the Thunder reeled in the Fisher Cats 2-1 in a morning start at Arm & Hammer Park Thursday.

The win followed a 2-1 loss on Wednesday after a 2-1 win on Tuesday.

In its last nine games, Trenton has scored a total of 27 runs. Four of those were wins.

“It was great for me to watch. I enjoyed watching them play — not always like that,’’ manager Tony Franklin said with a slight grin. “But this series they played well.”

The game did not start out that way as Turley gave up a triple, a single and a walk to the first three hitters. From there, he retired 18 of the next 20 batters.

“I was rushing too much,” said Turley, who has pitched effectively in his last four starts after a shaky early April. “But I was able to get my rhythm going and I felt comfortable. That’s the greatest issue.”

Trenton, now 15-12, collected only six hits. Two came off the bat of catcher Nick McCoy, who just Wednesday moved up from Single-A Charleston.

Actually he didn’t move up as much as he did across, since the RiverDogs happened to be in Lakewood for a series with the BlueClaws.

“We had about a 13-hour bus trip,” the 26-year-old said about the trip from South Carolina to Jersey. “When we got to the hotel, skip pulled me aside and said, ‘Nick, you’re going to Trenton tomorrow.’ I got in a car and drove over.”

He blended right in, not only handling his duties behind the plate but doubling in a run in the fifth and then scoring what proved to be the winner when Ramon Flores doubled.
McCoy also doubled in the eighth, but was stranded after Trenton loaded the bases with no outs before the rally died on a 1-2-3 double play.

“He did a good job calling the game,” Franklin said. “I don’t think there was one pitch that I felt wasn’t the right pitch.”

“(Turley) did a great job of mixing pitches,” McCoy said. “He was able to throw the breaking ball pretty much on any count, and it was a great put-away pitch.

“Later in the game, we were throwing that slider in the beginning of counts; he was mixing in the change-up and that made his fastball more effective as well.”

In Turley’s last four games, he has three wins and a no-decision. Over the past 16 innings, he’s allowed 7 earned runs, has 23 strikeouts and 12 walks, and has allowed 14 hits.

In his first two starts of the season, he gave up nine earned runs in 8.2 innings. He also gave up his only home runs (two) of the year.

Drafted out of high school, the 23-year-old Turley tries to keep things simple.

“When a game starts like that,” he said of the first three batters, “all you can do is control the next pitch. And that’s what I was trying to do.”

• The Thunder hit the road for a short three-game set with the Richmond Flying Squirrels in Virginia.

The Diamond is a place where the Thunder have had trouble winning. The first season of the Squirrels in the Eastern League (2011) saw Trenton go 1-7 in eight games with the San Francisco Giants affiliate, 5-10 overall.

Last season, Trenton split the four games it played down south while going 3-4 vs. Richmond overall.